No, I’m not dead. Just super busy. Still getting a lot done
but my body is feeling a bit tired, and under-performing a bit. Nothing crazy,
maybe 10%, but noticeable, I’ve just been lacking that top gear and really
looking forward to my rest days.
So, what have I been up to? Last week Saturday morning was
the CCF team beach workout. This time around, the male members of my team
showed up, and with the addition of Emma we dominated the friendly little competition,
winning both events (although barely winning both events!). Still, my attitude
this time was better anyway, and I enjoyed myself, and we did not take 3 hours.
AND we went to Sandbar after so breakfast was quick quick.
The rest of the weekend passed in a blur. Don’t think I did
much of note, that’s worth mentioning.
A lot happened in the work week. I guess the main thing is
that I took Tuesday completely off to work from home on editing our 76-page
document that summarizes Heart, what we do, and what we plan to do for each of
our portfolio projects this year. But I got that done, and Wednesday was pretty
much a day-long master planning meeting for Heart Capital that I sat in on.
What an amazing group of people I work with, from the top down. It really is
true, and I know I keep saying it, but this year is already going so much more
amazingly well than last year, which was quite terrible in a number of
respects. And all of my co-workers are just great: there’s not a single person
you look around the table and think ‘aw, geez, I have to work with so-and-so.’
And there’s no politics. Just love.
Anyway I also found an intern to take on work on the Social
Enterprise Collective (a project we are doing to produce a free, public
database of all the social enterprises in South Africa), and worked on a
government tender response, and a bunch of other admin and planning that was
not necessarily worth mentioning. Except the hassle of trying to get plane
tickets to Joburg for next week from an airline from which we have preferred
pricing.
What is worth mentioning is our check-in with Mama Rosie,
who I’ve talked about before. She’s actually an amazing woman: very strong and
steadfast. Not very well educated but with a big heart; she trains women from
her community to do beading work, and ran a vegetable garden before FoodTents
came along and put a GrowZone at her location. This meeting was a wake-up call
and a reminder again of why we do what we do, and also that of course to us,
FoodTents is only one of 12 projects we work with but to Mama Rosie, it’s
extremely important. We always do get caught up in being the centre of our own
universe, don’t we?
It was a pretty quiet week other than that; I mostly just
trained and went home. Mona’s moved in with me for the last couple of days
before her move to Port Elizabeth, so helped her move her stuff over. Fun
workouts though: Monday we did Isabel which is 30 snatches for time, which I
did with 33kgs and it felt awesome although my legs started to feel a bit tired
by the time the last 10 came around! Tuesday I just felt ‘off’ in both sessions
… strength and endurance just wasn’t there. Wednesday similar: my mental focus
was lacking and I had no desire to do the metcon. But it was a bit of a funny
thing, we had to do 100 air squats then 50 box jumps then 25 dead-hang strict
pullups. Chris said we should be careful jumping onto the box after all those
air squats. I remember walking over to the box after the squats, taking one
look at it, and literally saying out loud: “uh-uh.” So I waited a few seconds
before my first one. Never thought a 50cm box could look that high!!
Friday we did Grace, which is 30 clean & jerks for time.
In this workout I was most definitely lacking a higher gear, so I just went at
a slow & steady pace. I hadn’t done it in ages and was hoping for under
4:30, and under 4 minutes would be a dream. I finished at 4:05, so considering my
general level of fatigue that’s not too bad. On another day, under better
conditions, I estimate I could get another 20-30 seconds off my time. So, good
to know where I stand. Maybe one of these Saturday afternoons I’ll re-do Helen,
which hurt badly the first time I did it and scared me (it’s 3 rounds of 400m
run, 21 kettlebell swings, 12 pullups).
Speaking of Helen, Saturday’s beach workout was Sandy Helen
which is 400m run in sand, 21 kettlebell swings, and 12 burpees. This is
another of my favourite workouts because it’s so hard but I stuck to my plan of
not trashing my legs before tomorrow’s trail run, and skipped this workout in
favour of hitting up the Biscuit Mill for early shopping, breakfast at Sandbar
with the CCF crew, CCF team meeting, then went to Virgin Active to train because
there wasn’t open gym that day after all (or maybe it ended by the time of the
team meeting).
Diet-wise, I'm about to have my first high-starch veggie of the year, and I'm having a protein shake tomorrow morning that's very banana-heavy. So I guess I'm saying the hectic part of the detox is now over, but I'm still on the paleo challenge until mid-March. As with the whole 'no meat for 3 weeks' turning into my now eating still mostly eggs, fish, and chicken, (I have red meat maybe twice a week, whereas before it was pretty much daily), I'm just loving all the raw & steamed veggies.
Now, I’m finished packing for my trip next week, and going to
have some dinner and head down to a braai/house party in Hout Bay for just a
little while because bedtime tonight is 8:45 (I have to be up at 4:45 you
see!).
- “Does anyone want anything else?” – our waiter at Sandbar (he meant anything ‘different’ after a table of maybe 12 of us ordered 8 of the same thing)
- “It’s not gonna stop.” – Jon
- “At first I thought it was crazy, to orientate your whole diet around training. But now that I’ve experienced the intensity of it, I can totally understand why it’s necessary.” – Peter
- “We’re already so far ahead of the rest of the pack it’s not even funny. And it’s only going to get better from here.” – Peter
- “You’ve done really great work.” – Debbie
- “I don’t eat pizza.” “But you can have the toppings, can’t ya?” – Ellie & Jacques
- “Well buddy your health food is really good!” – Jacques
- “I hope it’s not …. Too bad.” – Jacques
- “I’m very confused.” – Mama Rosie
- “I was hoping I could manipulate you into being my agent on this one.” – Jeremy
- “CEO is CEO, wow!” – Anne
- “I’m just being high maintenance.” “I can see that.” – Ellie & Chris
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